There’s a lot that comes with running a successful website, especially when it’s an Ecommerce website. But, for any eCommerce website, there is definitely a need to measure success. After all, you’ll never know if you are moving towards your business goals or not right? For any marketing strategy, the golden rule is to measure everything in order to track success of your strategies. One of the easiest ways that supported the performance of any eCommerce site, the sales and total revenue is to be sure of website traffic with Google Analytics tool.
But, recently Google has announced to replace its Universal Google Analytics tool with Google Analytics 4 – Its next generation measurement solution, so to say. By July 1, 2023, Universal Google Analytics will stop introducing new hits. Therefore, Google recommends the users to begin using Google Analytics 4 for their websites. The end of Universal Analytics comes after Google listing user privacy issues.
Universal Google Analytics Helped the eCommerce Websites By:
- UA helped business owners take informed decisions backed by Statistics and Trends.
- Understanding the needs of Customers including relevant products and services.
- Understanding of what people search for depending on their needs and wants.
- Gives better understanding of what strategies may work for your business.
- Measuring conversions.
How Will the End of Universal Google Analytics Affect eCommerce
Though Google has extended support for Google Analytics 4, there are some limitations that websites may face. Also, there are some things that the end of Universal Google Analytics may bring about for eCommerce websites. Below mentioned are a few ways in which the end of the support for Universal Google Analytics will affect eCommerce websites:
No Restoration of Historical Data
The upgrade to Google Analytics 4 does not backfill any historical data as it only offers support for future data. So in order to see older data on your eCommerce website, website owners will have to continue using their Universal Analytics property.
Less Support For eCommerce Reporting
In case of GA4 the eCommerce reports have reduced information and Data when compared to Universal Analytics. It is true that Google will continue to add more features to improve its capabilities. But, as of now with GA4 there is a limitation to reporting capabilities. For eCommerce businesses, reports cannot be completely relied upon GA4.
No Support for Goals
Google Analytics 4 does not have goals. Therefore, to track conversions, eCommerce website owners have to mark on event type as conversion. Every time that action takes place, a conversion will be registered.
Alternatives to Google Analytics For eCommerce
Universal Google Analytics is truly a widely used reporting and analytics tool for websites. But, there are a lot of other Google Analytics alternatives that you can try. Alternatives of Google Analytics are mentioned below:
- Adobe Analytics
- Hubspot Marketing Analytics
- Mixpanel
- Matomo
- Woopra
- Plausible
- Foxmetrics
- Fair Analytics
Though Google Analytics 4 will not completely replace Universal Google Analytics, the users will soon have to adapt to the newer platform as Google will introduce new updates on the GA4 platform that can help in improving the experience of website owners through GA4.
